


Helpline

by coldcobalt



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Reference to sexual assault, father figure hollis, oof ouch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 20:24:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19325461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldcobalt/pseuds/coldcobalt
Summary: “Mr. Mason, sir, it’s an honor to be talking with you like this—”He sounds so young on the phone, so utterly starstruck. You wonder just what you’re getting yourself into.Dan needs a lot of advice over the years.





	Helpline

_“Mr. Mason, sir, it’s an honor to be talking with you like this—”_

He sounds so young on the phone, so utterly starstruck. You wonder just what you’re getting yourself into.

\---

He arrives at your doorstep the next day.

His name is Daniel; he’s round-shouldered and soft-spoken. But when he gets to talking about his inventions (handheld computers, digital goggles, an _airship—_  he’s only twenty-two but has a Masters in aeronautics, an achievement that puts your sorry GED to shame), there’s fire in his eyes.

When you clap a hand to his back, his face flushes with pure, undisguised joy and god, he’s just a _kid_.

It makes you want to take him by both shoulders, warn him of all the ways the job will break him, how little of the world can be neatly categorized into good and evil. But you already know it’ll fall on deaf ears: he’s already dreaming big, reaching for the stars, and you won’t be the one to drag him back to earth.

(You believe in him, in a way that you haven't believed in a mask for a very long time.)

You give the newest Nite Owl your blessings; tell him to keep your number, to call you anytime.

\---

“Mr.—” Daniel says, “Hollis.” The phone line crackles. “How do I get the blood out of this thing?”

“Rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush,” you say, thinking back to your first busted nose. “And a little elbow grease.”

\---

“Hollis,” he whispers, quiet, so quiet. “Hollis. My god.”

From what you can gather, he's just stopped his first rape in progress. Knowing New York, it’ll be the first of many: so many alleyways, so many terrible possibilities.

It scared you shitless the first time too. (You don’t want to think about how much they blurred together, in the end.)

“He just—and she was _screaming—_ ” He chokes back a sob.

The line goes silent for a few seconds, save for ragged breathing. Finally he speaks, asking if it ever gets easier, and you’re not sure what to say.

(Down the hall, Sally is sobbing, blood spilling from her mouth to splatter on the floor. The sides of her ribcage will be bruised for weeks, but it'll take longer for your hands to stop shaking whenever you remember.)

“It does,” you answer, and it’s almost the truth.

\---

“Hey,” he says. “I ran into this mask, I think we might partner up. Nice guy, kind of intense.”

It seems like a good idea to you, at the time. How could you have known?

\---

“I just don’t know what I _did,"_ he says, rambling. “I stitch him up for the hundredth time and he freaks out, calls me a whole bunch of names, and just runs off— It’s been a week and no note, nothing.”

Right under his nose, you suspect, the partnership has changed into something else entirely. It doesn’t seem like Danny’s noticed.

“Just give him a little time,” you say, “a man like that needs his space. Want to stop by for a beer?”

Danny shows up an hour later. He stays late into the night; as the pile of bottles grows deeper and he spins increasingly animated stories about his graceful, brilliant friend _( "—and the way he moves when he's fighting, it's like poetry—")_ , you know that you were right.

\---

“So, Hollis,” he says, and even over the phone you can tell he’s beaming. “I uh. We worked it out. Me and Rorschach.”

He’s laughing to himself, the last weeks of worry forgotten: moonstruck, a young man in love.

“Oh?” you say, and you understand what he’s trying to tell you, here.

You think of Captain Metropolis, HJ, the Silhouette: all the things left unsaid, the conversations you could never bear to have ( _it was a different time_ , you think, but deep down you know that was never really an excuse.)

Somewhere thirty blocks north, a young man—who has always had the city’s best interests at heart; who thinks the world of you—holds a phone in nervous hands, waiting for a response.

(And you want to ask him i _s this really what you want_ and _is he treating you right_ and _are you sure_ , but it’s not what he needs to hear. Not right now.)

“Son,” you say, instead, “I’m proud of you”.  You don’t miss the quiet way his breath hitches in return.

\---

The calls taper down sometime in the mid-seventies. It’s understandable: a new relationship, a busy schedule. You’re just an old has-been, after all.

\---

“Hollis,” he says. Your regular greeting peters out halfway; his voice has a flatness that drops your stomach down clear to your toes. “I think Rorschach killed someone.”

For once, you don’t have any advice for him.

\---

“Sorry, now’s not a good time,” he says, and you kick yourself: you should have known. “It doesn’t look so good out there. I think there are going to be riots.”

\---

 _KEENE ACT PASSED: VIGILANTES ILLEGAL_ , screams the newspaper on your kitchen table. You hold the receiver, waiting, but the line just rings, and rings, and rings.

\---

You show up on his doorstep for once, taking note of all the takeout containers piled high on his counters; the dark circles under his eyes. You apologize for waking him.

“No,” he says, sheepishly. “It’s fine. It’s four pm, I should be up by now. Still getting my sleep schedule adjusted to civilian life, you know how it is—”

The Keene Act passed nearly eight months ago, but you don't point that out.

“How do people do this?" he asks "Just live normally, be a regular person, all the time?”

(You think of rooftops by moonlight, the city’s secrets yours for the taking; the cold air blowing off the Hudson and the skyline glittering—)

When you take him by the shoulder and lead him to the kitchen, his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

\---

“Hey,” he says, and it’s no longer a young man that speaks to you across a telephone line. The exhaustion in his voice is entirely too familiar.

“I know we just saw each other yesterday, but --” his voice tapers off. “Rorschach showed up. In in my kitchen. Eating my food, like we were still partners, and, Hollis, I—”

He reorients.

“There’s something going on, something funny; I don’t know if it’s all this nuclear doom-and-gloom or anything else, but there’s something in the air.”

And you’ve felt it too: whispers in the wind, murmurs on the tides. Death stirs in the quiet corners of the city, jaws gnashing and something’s coming, something big.

“And I just wanted—if anything happens, I just wanted to thank you. For all your advice, over the years.”

You’re an old man. You’ve had a good life. Given your choice of career, it’s a miracle you’ve lasted as long as you did.

And maybe it’s just a misfire in your old brain but for a single, shining second, you forget when you are: it’s 1962 and a starry-eyed kid has just come up with the courage to call you for the first time, voice thick with naive wonder; he deserves the world, deserves to become one of the true heroes that he still thinks exists—

( _Please, god,_ you think. _Let him make it out of this okay._ )

\--

The knot tops shove their way into the apartment before you can stop them, spoiling for a fight. Your mind knows all the one-two combos _(jab-cross-hook; bob and weave)_ as well as it ever did, but your body can’t keep pace. Thirty years back into the past is just too far of a reach.

When the award comes crashing down, colliding with your face like the specter of Armageddon, you're only thinking of one thing:

_Who will Danny call now?_


End file.
